Guilty as Sin (50 page)

“Please,” he said, his eyes open so wide with fear Kate could see the whites even in the dim light. “Please don’t tell him I found his treasures.”

Treasures? Kate shoved him aside, and though he was taller than her by several inches and outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, he skittered away as quickly as he could.

The roaring in her ears was so loud Kate barely heard his continued pleas for her not to tell on him.

Kate went to flip the lid open, cursing when she met resistance. She looked closer and saw that there was a combination lock holding the latch closed.

“Please, put it away. Put it away so he doesn’t find out,” he pleaded, from the opposite corner.

Ignoring him, Kate pulled the box out of the chest and carried it to the patch of sunlight that shone through one of the dusty windows. She studied the contents, her breath catching in her throat as she saw several pieces of women’s jewelry, a hair clip. And no, she wasn’t imagining it. The Game Boy Michael had taken upstairs with him the night he was kidnapped. Kate’s breath froze in her chest when she heard heavy footsteps approaching on the dock.

Before she could react, Christian jumped into the water next to the boat and disappeared under the boathouse. Kate stumbled across the platform, scrambling to pull the lid of the chest back into place.

Just as she turned the door was flung open behind her.

Kate turned, her blood turning to ice when she saw John.

“Kate, what are you doing in here?” he asked as he skirted around the back of the boat and walked over to her side.

Her brain scrambled for an excuse, but she couldn’t think past the voice screaming at her to get out of there, away from him. “I didn’t think you’d be back until later,” she said weakly.

“And you thought you’d do a little canoeing?” he replied. His gaze flicked knowingly down to the chest.

Her gaze instinctively followed, and she felt all the breath whoosh from her lungs as she saw that the lid was slightly askew.

An odd, almost satisfied smile stretched across John’s face. “I see you’ve discovered my secret.”

T
ommy rubbed at his gritty eyes and took another look at the information displayed across his laptop screen. After he’d left CJ’s, he’d headed back to his place and spent the entire night, chasing bank account numbers, connecting transactions to a dozen different shell companies, following the money through wormhole after wormhole. Now he’d parked himself in CJ’s office at the sheriff’s headquarters and was trying to make sense of it all.

Again he squinted at his screen, wondering if his powers of reason had fully deserted him. It was entirely possible that sleeplessness combined with the emotional stress of what had gone down with Kate was causing him to hallucinate.

Bullshit. You’ve gone without sleep for days and dealt with the emotional trauma of having your buddy’s leg blown off less than two feet away, and you didn’t hallucinate then.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, adrenaline spiking in his blood as the implications hit home.

“You find something?” CJ looked up from the paperwork spread across his desk.

Tommy didn’t say a word, just turned his laptop around so CJ could see the website displayed on the screen. “Mountainside
Real Estate Development Company,” Tommy said grimly. “I traced Tavers International back to it.”

CJ’s skin paled. “That’s the company that bought Burkhart’s company.”

Tommy nodded and rose to his feet as he closed the laptop. “And kept good old Johnny on as vice president of sales.”

“Jesus, you don’t really think…” CJ said, trailing off as it became clear that yeah, he really did think too.

“CJ, right now I can’t think about much of anything beyond the fact that right now, Kate is alone in a house with a man who likely raped and murdered several women.”

“Why,” she started, but seemed to choke on the words, her mouth as dry as the Sahara. When she spoke again, her voice came out reedy and thin. “Why do you have Michael’s Game Boy?”

John gave her a look that was a mixture of condescension and pity. “I think you know the answer to that.”

She struggled to take it all in, her brain unwilling to accept that this man who’d known her for her entire life, who’d been one of the few people to reach out to her in the wake of her brother’s death, was the one who’d murdered him.

And murdered at least four other girls after that.

Pure instinct had her hurtling for the door. He caught her arm in a vice grip as she passed. She jerked and kicked, freezing when she felt the cold press of metal and heard the unmistakable
click
of a revolver being cocked.

“Don’t,” he whispered. That menacing whisper sent a chill down her back, and in that second she knew he was
the one who attacked her in her townhouse. “I don’t want to shoot you yet. Not when I’ve waited this long to finally get my hands on you.”

The last piece of the puzzle snapped into place. “It was me,” she breathed, sick, twisting vertigo making her vision swim and her legs wobble. “You didn’t come for Michael. You came for me.”

John’s hand slid up her chest, his fingers curled around her throat. “Imagine my surprise when I unwrapped that blanket and found Michael instead of you.”

“You didn’t have to kill him,” she choked on a sob.

“Of course I did. The sedative wore off too soon and he saw me. Think about it, Kate, if only you’d kept your legs shut, Michael would still be alive. Now get on the boat.”

Frantic sobs ripped from her chest as thoughts of Michael’s last moments bombarded her. Waking up confused, drugged, to see a person he recognized and trusted. And to have that person… “Why did you… hurt him?” She couldn’t even get the words out.

John shrugged. “I thought it would make it look more convincing.”

It should have been me. It should have been me.
Fresh guilt crashed over her in a wave, threatening to consume her.
She’d
done this. She’d unwittingly lured the monster to their door. And her brother died because of it.

“Now get on the boat.”

Kate shook her head and tried to tear herself from his grip, not stopping even as his hand tightened around her throat while the other pressed the gun barrel against her head with enough force to split the skin.

She couldn’t let him take her. If he did she was as good as dead. She felt the sickening pressure of his erection against her spine and knew he wouldn’t just kill her outright. She
threw her elbow back against his ribs, but the blow was weak as she struggled for air. Her vision tunneled, dimming as she felt herself being dragged onto the boat.

He was going to take her. And this time Tommy wasn’t going to show up in time to stop him.

T
ommy hit the parking lot at a dead run, ignoring CJ’s shouts for him to wait and let him assess the situation.

Wait? Assess? While Kate was in the same house with a brutal murderer? Fat fucking chance.

As he started to pull out in his truck, he heard the wailing of sirens as CJ and another deputy fired up their cruisers. Realizing that if he went tearing through town he was likely to take down a pedestrian or two, Tommy set himself right on CJ’s bumper and drafted off of him all the way to Burkhart’s.

If that sick fuck harmed a single hair on Kate’s head… Tommy shoved the thought away, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t likely Burkhart even knew they were on to him. Even if he’d pumped Kate for information, as far as she knew, Tricia wasn’t even close to making an ID. And even in the unlikely event Kate let the new information they had about Michael’s case slip, there was no reason for John to think he was under suspicion.

But the fact that Kate hadn’t picked up her phone the half dozen times he’d dialed her wasn’t reassuring.

As he followed CJ’s speeding cruiser through the streets of Burkhart’s neighborhood, he couldn’t get visions of the man’s other victims out of his mind. Their bruised and battered
faces and bodies, some with injuries so severe their own parents had trouble identifying them.

The thought of Kate, her delicate nose and chin crushed under the impact of those fists…

As CJ got closer to the house, the sirens ceased. It made sense. If Burkhart heard them coming in hot and got spooked, it could get real ugly, real fast.

He took it as his own cue to settle the hell down. He wouldn’t do Kate any good if he lost his head.

He pulled in behind CJ and heard the other cruiser pull in behind him.

Tommy got out of his truck and started to rush the door and shot CJ an annoyed look when the other man grabbed him by the arm to stay him.

“We have no reason to assume there’s trouble, so let’s not cause any,” he cautioned.

Tommy grudgingly obeyed and clenched and unclenched his fists as CJ pressed the doorbell.

“Technically you shouldn’t even be here,” CJ said as they waited for the door to open.

Tommy shot him and Deputy Roberts a stony glare. “Try and move me.”

Deputy Roberts took a half step back. CJ shook his head in exasperation.

After a full minute, two more rings at the doorbell, and no answer, CJ tried the knob.

When he found it locked, he and Tommy exchanged a look. Two size twelve booted feet hit the door in perfect unison, sending the heavy wood swinging in with an ear-splitting
crack
.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Roberts said nervously. “It’s not going to look good if we don’t have a warrant—”

“You want to wait outside for Burkhart to let you in”—
Tommy wheeled around on him—“you go ahead. I’m not leaving till I know Kate is safe.”

Tommy felt the hairs stand up on his arms as the three did a quick sweep of the downstairs. It was empty and eerily silent, though the dishes on the table suggested recent activity, and the sliding glass door that opened onto the deck was open, letting fresh air in through the screen.

Tommy started up the stairs, pausing when he heard what sounded like crying coming from outside.

His stomach lurching, he called for CJ as he ran over to the screen door and slid it open, his boots pounding on the deck as he followed the sound down to the beach.

It took him a moment to realize the sound was coming from under the deck. Tommy ducked underneath and saw that the sobbing was coming from a large male figure. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows he recognized Burkhart’s housekeeper’s kid huddled in a ball, sobbing incoherently.

Tommy’s stomach clenched with dread. He’d seen the kid around town, knew there was something not quite right about him, but had no idea whether the kid might be violent.

“Where’s Kate?” Tommy shouted.

At the sound of his shout, the boy’s head shot up, his expression full of fear. “I was only looking at the treasures, I didn’t mean to get her in trouble.”

“Get who in trouble? Kate?” CJ asked as he ducked under the deck.

“The lady, from the TV. I didn’t want her to see the treasures. And he, he got so mad.”

Tommy’s stomach churned with fear. “What did he do? What did he do to the lady from the TV?”

“T-took her. Like he t-took the others,” Christian choked out.

“Where?” Tommy fought the urge to grab the kid by the shoulders and shake it out of him.

“What’s going on? What you are doing?” A thickly accented female voice rang through the air. Magda ran over and shoved Tommy out of the way to kneel next to her son. She cupped his face in her hands and crooned to him in an Eastern European language he couldn’t quite decipher.

“Ask him what happened to Kate,” Tommy said through clenched teeth, feeling like his chest was about to explode.

“He took her on a boat,” Magda said. “He had a gun and he took her on the boat.”

“Do you know where?” Tommy asked, fear turning his blood to ice.

“No,” Magda said softly. “Christian doesn’t know where he took her. He never takes them to the same place twice.”

The realization that Magda must have known about John’s activities before now sent a ripple of shock through him.

“You’re the one who gave Kate the newspaper clipping,” CJ said. Tommy surged to his feet and walked out from under the deck.